Westborough

Four life science companies in Central Massachusetts received a combined $1.54 million in tax incentives to create 87 jobs in 2014, the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center (MLSC) announced Wednesday.

The owner of lithium-ion battery maker A123 Systems, which has operations in Westborough and Hopkinton, won an auction Friday for hybrid car maker Fisker Automotive with a $149.2 million bid.

Three Westborough apartment buildings, known collectively as the Fountainhead Apartments, were sold for $83.75 million, according to records held by the Worcester County Registry of Deeds.

A boom in licensing revenue propelled a 15-percent jump in year-over-year sales in the fourth quarter for ViryaNet of Westborough, the company reported Monday.

Biotech startup RXi Pharmaceuticals of Westborough announced Tuesday it was approved for listing on the NASDAQ Capital Market and began trading on the exchange.

EMC Corp. of Hopkinton, which recently announced financial results that exceeded analysts' expectations, has declared a quarterly cash dividend of 10 cents per share of stock that it will pay in April.

Larger salaries may be hard to come by in a tight job market th favors employers, but the MetroWest region continued to enjoy significant payroll growth that out performed Suffolk County and the nation, according to federal data included in the 495/MetroWest Partnership's new report, Strength in Numbers. The partnership reported total payroll increased by $2 billion, to $19 billion, between 2010 and 2012, a jump of more than 10 percent. The organization, a quasi-public regional development agency that covers 33 communities stretching from Littleton to Foxborough and from Shrewsbury to Natick, measured growth using data published by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), and the figures show that the partnership's geographic coverage area performed better than Suffolk County as well as the nation. According to BLS data, the Boston area's payroll grew 9.5 percent in the same time period, while U.S. payroll grew 8.4 percent.

Consolidations by some major employers in MetroWest caused the region's office vacancy rates to climb in the fourth quarter of 2013, according to data from global real estate broker Colliers International.

Lithium-ion battery maker A123 Energy Solutions, which has operations in Westborough and Hopkinton, announced Wednesday a contract to supply, install and commission a 1-megawatt energy storage system in Japan.

Hopkinton-based EMC and aerospace, defense, security, and advanced technology firm Lockheed Martin will open a cybersecurity center in Israel in which the two firms will engage in technology projects in the southern part of the country. The center will be located in a technology park in Be'er-Sheva, and the projects will take place with the help of Israeli companies, government agencies and academic institutions in the region to explore and promote collaborative research and development projects in cloud computing, data analytics and related cybertechnologies, according to a statement from EMC.